Production lines of the construction described and functioning as described are known in practice in various configurations. At least the bending press and the toughening station operate cyclically. In modern technology, such production lines must meet a number of basic requirements, that is to say that on the one hand they must operate with high output and thus short cycle times and, on the other hand, they must supply products such as for example bent glass sheets, which maintain close and extreme tolerances with respect to production accuracy. In addition, the apparatus must be able to be set up at short notice and in a simple manner for different bending geometries if different glass sheets have to be bent differently in batches and frequently as well with relatively small batch sizes.
The transfer device of WO 90/11973 is a shuttle transfer device whose shuttle is located in the station frame. For this purpose, mounting cross-beams are provided for the shuttle mounting, and to which the shuttle is attached. The mounting cross-beams are movably supported on cross-beam guides of the station frame and are freely retractable into the press frame of the bending press. This system has proved to be satisfactory, but is capable of improvement if short cycle times, high levels of accuracy in relation to the bent glass sheets are required and in addition it is to be ensured that even with extremely short cycle times, deformation faults caused by vibration and resulting from high forces from positive or negative acceleration are not imparted to the glass sheets.